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3 Effective Ways to Modernize Your Campus Recruitment Strategy

It’s the end of September and that means organizations across the world are travelling around to many campuses to promote their internship and new graduate programs. As the war for talent continues to become increasingly competitive, organizations have had to shift their efforts in order to modernize and innovate their campus recruitment strategies. Having both a presence on campus and through social platforms is imperative to remain competitive and attractive to both students today and in the future.

A strong element of campus recruitment is ensuring that you are developing and enhancing your brand awareness and preference with students. To do to this, you need to ensure you are active on the social media platforms they are: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter. Telling your story about what makes your workplace special and reaching your target demographic from their first year of study is becoming increasingly important as students are starting to form impressions and make decisions earlier about organizations and the type of company they would want to work for.

Keeping all of this in mind, here are three key strategies that you can use to modernize your campus recruitment strategy:

1) Align your campus recruitment strategy with your EVP
Your Employee Value Proposition is what makes your organization unique and differentiates you from competitors. It is imperative that your campus strategy is built around the foundation of your EVP pillars. These pillars need to be embodied on your career booth, recruitment materials, social media strategy, careers website, and advertisements. Students need to have an authentic perception of your organization and by centralizing your recruitment marketing materials around your EVP pillars, you will deliver a consistent message that encompasses why your organization is a great place to work.

2) Prioritize your top target schools
Many employers believe that the more schools you can get face time at the better, when in actuality you can make a bigger impact when you focus on fewer schools. It’s easier to develop deeper relationships when you focus on the key schools where you are getting your most successful student hires and long-term employees. With technology and social media platforms, there are plenty of online opportunities that you can still expand your reach and presence to campuses across North America while committing to career fairs and in classroom presentations at your priority campuses.

3) Develop an Intern Brand Ambassador Program
Your people are your best ambassadors so by implementing a formal Brand Ambassador program, you are able to strengthen your recruitment team efforts and impact. Students are looking to truly understand what it would be like to work for an organization and what learning / development opportunities they would have available to them. Sharing success stories that showcase this information from current / past interns through both a social strategy and on-campus events will help to positively impact student’s perception of your brand. The more authentic and relevant the experience is for the student, the better off you will be. It’s important that Intern success stories are shared through various social media platforms and at in-classroom presentations / career fairs at your targeted schools. This type of program can be fairly easy to implement, especially if you start with a small pool of interns, so the sooner you can start sharing your Intern’s voice the better!

Campus recruitment will continue to require a customized strategy in order to truly understand where your top talent is coming from and to enhance your overall employer brand preference and awareness. There are lots of innovative ways you can re-vamp your campus recruitment strategy so we want to know, what are you doing to enhance your campus recruitment strategy this fall?

About Blu Ivy Group

Blu Ivy Group is a leading employer branding and employee engagement consultancy that aligns your organization with contemporary workplace paradigms. Blu Ivy Group’s mission is to help client’s build award-winning people practices, inspire extraordinary employee engagement, and cultivate unique and desirable workplaces.

We provide integrated solutions in employer brand and engagement research, strategic consulting, employer brand integration, creative and talent communications. Blu Ivy Group is a trusted partner to many of North America’s most respected employer brands. For more information, go to www.bluivygroup.com